


La Mort du Cygnes

by MariusPontmersquee



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: 1832, Complete, I am so sorry, It's Okay, M/M, Um everyone dies, but it's set at the barricade on the 6th, especially for everything, semi-canon, so basically it's sort of freeform, this is my first mini fic don't hate me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-04 01:45:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1762157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MariusPontmersquee/pseuds/MariusPontmersquee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the morning of June 6th, 1832.<br/>(or, this is how everyone dies)</p>
            </blockquote>





	La Mort du Cygnes

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first mini fic, and I'm writing something bigger but y'all have to bear with me because I am a long way from publishing that.
> 
> I wrote most of this half asleep/half crying on barricade day. If you really want to get the full effect, I'd suggest listening to the dying swan from the ballet swan lake as you read this. You know. If you want.
> 
> Linky link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmlpxIJ1BqY
> 
> p.s. Have (pont)mercy

* * *

 

When the national guard crested the peak of the barricade, it was over.  
It is important to note that, before this proceeds, one thing must be ascertained: People die all the time. It does not take much to kill a heart. A grievance, a prolonged cruelty; self-hatred, heartbreak – it happens at in a note, in a look, in a breath. The children who died that night were very much alive.  
This, perhaps, made it worse.

~

Bossuet’s pain was the sharpest, but, in retrospect, the most brief. It brings relief, does it not? To know that he was shot defending the doors to the café. Through the smashed window, he held Joly’s clammy palm, and yet despite the skinny man’s pleas, Bossuet would not allow him – could not allow him – to open those wide French doors. He nodded curtly to Combeferre as the spectacled man dragged him fellow medical student back, breath laboured through sobs. Bossuet was not unlucky, he realized – perhaps a little late, perhaps not - as the bullets ripped through him and he fell back on the wooden doors, body spasming and eyes unseeing. He was truly loved.

Joly died fretting. He sobbed for his fallen comrades around him, for they were once alive. His fingers clutched a column and the sound that came from his throat was an ugly mixture of fearful angst and deep sorrow, hoarse and open like a cresting wave. Joly died an honorable man via unhonorable means. He did not want to leave, for he had spent too long afraid. His nose flared as he searched for a crescendo of long, ebony hair and the figure of a bald man in the morn. When those fluttering eyes could no longer see, his voice broke and he resigned himself to death, which hit him like a freight train. Joly was innocent; his ghost, a doe. Big marbled orbs that became glassy and calm when his anxious heart ground to a screeching halt.

Feuilly, first a worker and, most importantly a friend, died holding the tattered remains of another. He looked up innocently – it was an unfamiliar expression on his face.

(Do not weep for me)

As the soldiers approached, his body folded, like a flower, with the weight of loss. He clutched tighter at Joly, who had died curled into himself, pulling him closer into his dirtied chest. Feuilly’s back, that rigid and unbending structure, bowed under the pain. For his friend’s lover behind that screen door; and with this knowledge Feuilly wrapped his arms around that body tighter. 

Poland, that brave nation, had never felt so far away. 

He held Joly for himself; an anchor to steady, and the tears cascaded like the diamonds he would never afford down onto his strong breast. The soldier shot him in the head, and Feuilly died - not only as an orphan, but a brother, too.

When Jehan died, harps played. Violins wept. The flowers, which rained down from the sky like stars, fell into his eyes and he blinked, once – twice - as if to commit them to memory. He danced in those soulful slate irises in that moment, the verse clutched unfeelingly between his fingers. His hair (like the fields he’d danced in as a child) haloed his pretty face, and his lips parted slowly as if he was trying to say something very important. Jehan died with a smile on his face, not darkness closing in, but dappled light – growing bright as his soul took flight from the doorways the bullets had opened in his pastel waistcoat. He was good.

Courfeyrac died in the attic of the Musain. He saw the plight of the fallen barricade, his arms tethered to the children who had fallen all around - and kept still as the soldiers came up behind him. The light set his skin golden, and his goodness glowed out of him as if it could not bear to see him go. You could say that when Courfeyrac died, he was already in heaven – standing like a vision under the morning light, hair as rich as mahogany, watching that last sunrise. He closed his eyes as the bullets tore his body apart, a single tear dripping down his face as he tilted his face towards the sky. Courfeyrac was never miserable, not even in death, his happiness a gift that he gave to the world. He floated towards heaven, a new angel of a gracious God.

Bahorel died in the embrace of a soldier, who had dug his bayonet into the rich bistre skin of his chest. Bahorel did not feel like an insurgent as he meandered towards the light. He held the hand of a little boy, a little boy with wide brown eyes set into a smooth, youthful curve of black skin. The child smiled with a disarmingly carefree air – Bahorel couldn’t remember how old he’d been, but remembered that he had died a long time ago. He felt the blood in his arms and held his brother of too many moons previous. The light engulfed them; Bahorel thought of his friends.

Combeferre’s death was like the death of a bird. As the artillery men surrounded him he realized with terrifying certainty that his wings were beneath him, and it broke his heart more than anything else in the world to know that he could not fly. They were grey and unfolded around him like a cocoon, and Combeferre studied them through rounded, rosy spectacles, dazed. The boy died to the clear and sorrowful dance of the dying swan, and flew towards heaven with pure wings of white, gaze tilted skywards the whole way.

And, in that little backroom, where the sun sank high through the tempered glass; Enjolras, the little child of the sunlight. It shone through the window onto his golden hair, and even though everything was wrong, the republic shone in those periwinkle eyes. For he had given the world everything, and it was not enough. He had given it his friends – his unyielding love and his life. There were no regrets at that epoch, for there, through those soldiers, a figure woke. 

Grantaire.

Grantaire’s death was noble, even if it did not look so. He stumbled forward and clasped death by the ankles, wrung his wrists at its warm, skeletal feel and clambered up its legs to accept it head on. He followed his revolutionary into the light, but first:

The raven-haired man pitched forward. His feet fell like the gentlest press of the highest black keys on a large ivory piano. Around him, paint curled, creating a swirling pattern of blood red and black night and gold lightning. 

If anyone had died before the day of June 5th, it was Grantaire.

And yet, in that moment, he was only light.

Enjolras, who would always live, grasped at the warm, pulsing fingers of a boy who had claimed death long ago. They looked upon one another, and grieved a little for the lack of embraces they’d shared - how few kisses they had, how little time was allowed, but mostly they just smiled.

“Do you permit it?” 

Enjolras' hand spoke as an answer, long slender fingers gripping tightly to the cynic. 

That smile had not ceased when the report sounded.

~

It is very rare that a group of individuals should pass through with every soul intact, but the nine children of the barricade carried that load, and for that, they did not barely miss becoming historic.

They are.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments are always appreciated xx


End file.
